Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Tired Jim Is Hideously Tired

It probably has something to do with the headache I’ve had all damned day.

Even an hour on the lathe after work didn’t help. Much.

So here, have a picture of some turned birdhouses instead of an actual post.

The one on the left is zebrawood, with the perch and roof made from Brazilian rosewood. The one on the right is holly with a spalted birch sombrero roof.

A lot of turners make these in miniature, usually as Christmas tree decorations. These are full sized, with holes cut for finch sized birds and as they are intended for actual use, they’re finished in simple bee’s wax.

Turned birdhouse are fun and good practice on the lathe.

Speaking of lathes, I’ve been working on the new lathe and sooner or later I’ll get around to doing a pictorial on it. It’s a massive cast iron machine made by Delta. It’s 30 years old, but I got it “new” still bolted to its shipping skid and packed in cosmoline (a thick grease used to preserve machinery and weapons). I’ve spent the last two weeks installing, adjusting, and tuning it. One of the things I find simply amazing about it is how smooth and precise it is – and quiet. When it’s running I can barely hear it. And massive as the machine is it allows for some very large turnings, but it also allows me to do some very, very small and precise work – like that rosewood perch on the zebrawood birdhouse. That perch is only about size of a large cribbage peg (speaking of which, I turned some cribbage pegs tonight as well, just because I could).

The birds around here, who disagree loudly over who sits in which branch in any given tree, would have an all out battle for one of those.

And the small bird that crashed into my patio door earlier and sat there stunned for a while just hopped up and flew away. After doing a careful pre-flight check to make sure all the important flying parts worked! Think it was one of the thrasher varieties, I'll have to look it up later.

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Jim Wright is a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and freelance writer. He lived longer in Alaska than anywhere else and misses it terribly. He recently moved to the fetid Panhandle of Florida and lives now in an ancient Cold War bunker of a house surrounded by alligators and rednecks. He's been called the Tool of Satan, but he prefers to think of himself as the Devil's Designated Driver. He is the mind behind Stonekettle Station. You can email him at jim@stonekettle.com. You can follow him on Twitter @stonekettle, or you can join the boisterous bunch he hosts on Facebook at Facebook/Stonekettle. Remember to bring brownies and mind the white cat, he bites. Hard.

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